Implementing Quantcast tags is super easy with Google Tag Manager as they now offer direct support in the form of two custom Quantcast tags, one for Quantcast Advertise, one for Quantcast Measurement. No need for custom HTML tags.

Those custom tags are much easier to maintain, they are less prone to mistakes, easier to debug and more flexible in a sense. Of course, custom HTML can do essentially the same things, but custom tags make things much simpler. Especially using other variables inside the Quantcast tag is now much easier.

The Custom Quantcast Advertise Tag

The tag can be found by clicking “new tag” and then Choose tag type > Custom > Quantcast Advertise.

You have the following options.

1. P-Code. This is the unique ID associated with your Quantcast account.
2. Labels. Labels are used to pass all of the information to Quantcast. You can use multiple labels by separating them with a comma “,”. You can use a dot “.” to suggest any kind of hierarchy. Note that Quantcast Advertise labels always begin with “_fp.event”. Check out some information here on the most common labels.
3. Revenue (only for Conversion specific tags). This value is important for Quantcast to optimize, so if you have an estimate on any kinds of revenue it’s a good idea to include it. For instance, you might guess the value you have from a newsletter sign up versus any other kind of contact form. Of course, you can import eCommerce data as well.
4. Order ID (only for Conversion specific tags). If you’re wondering how one could use this, I decided to create for each submitted contact form an order id in GTM simply by combining the user ID (thanks to Simoahava) and a timestamp. This then gets passed into Quantcast and into Google Analytics.

The usual Quantcast Advertise setup is

• An All Pages tag, present on all pages of your website
• Conversion specific tags firing on the confirmation pages of certain important actions (which you then tag using the label)

Getting the Sequence Right

I set up Quantcast for a customer, using Tag Sequencing,  and was about to write this post about how this is a beautiful exercise in understanding tag sequencing. But turns out, in my test application, the first tag is simply too slow. So never mind that thought, If you want to make sure things work out correctly, use a blocking trigger on your All pages tag.

Because if you want to implement:

1. On all pages of your website an All Pages tag
2. On the confirmation page of your contact form the conversion specific tag with label “_fp.event.Something”

you have to watch out for how those things operate. Two tags with the same P-Code block each other, whatever fires first blocks the other. So if the all pages tag happens to fire faster, the conversion specific one will not send the (valuable) information to Quantcast. So here’s the conversion specific tag.

Debugging With Tag Inspector

You can use the Chrome Extension called Quantcast Tag Inspector to make sure your setup works as expected. Here is my setup.

The Custom Quantcast Measurement Tag

The tag can be found by clicking “new tag” and then under Choose tag type > Custom > Quantcast Measurement. It works just as the Advertise tag, but you’re limited to the two options P-Code and Labels, the others you don’t need.